THE BOWL ELIGIBLE BLOG
Which Cities Have Multiple FBS Teams?
Only two cities have two FBS stadiums inside the same city limits, but five metro areas have three. Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, the Bay Area, and South Florida, measured from the stadium data.
Start with the strict version of the question, because the answer is smaller than you think. In our stadium database, the city field is the municipality the stadium actually sits in, and by that measure exactly two cities in America have two FBS stadiums inside the same city limits: Atlanta and Houston. Everywhere else, the second team in town is technically in the next town over. The interesting list is the metro one, so that is where this post spends its time, with the city-versus-metro line flagged every time it moves.
The true same-city pairs
Atlanta has Georgia Tech and Georgia State, whose stadiums are 2.58 miles apart, the closest pair of FBS stadiums in the country. Houston has the University of Houston and Rice, 3.62 miles apart. Both pairs cross conference lines, Tech in the ACC against Georgia State in the Sun Belt, Houston in the Big 12 against Rice in the American, so the two closest stadium pairs in the sport are not even league matchups. They are just neighbors.
The three-team metros
Atlanta again. Add Kennesaw State, 20.36 miles northwest of Georgia Tech's stadium in the suburb that shares its name, and metro Atlanta has three FBS programs. Kennesaw is its own city, which is exactly the kind of technicality this post is keeping score of, but nobody drawing the Atlanta metro leaves it out.
Dallas-Fort Worth. SMU is in Dallas, TCU is in Fort Worth, and North Texas is in Denton, and the three stadiums form a triangle with no long side: SMU to TCU is 35.05 miles, SMU to North Texas is 33.41, and TCU to North Texas is 36.20. Three separate cities, one metroplex, three FBS teams within about 36 miles of each other.
The Bay Area. Stanford's stadium is in Stanford, California's is in Berkeley, and San Jose State's is in San Jose. San Jose State to Stanford is 17.92 miles, Stanford to California is 30.57, and California to San Jose State is 43.47. Three cities again, one continuous urban area, and the distances are short enough that all three show up in each other's recruiting footprint whether they like it or not.
South Florida. Miami's Hard Rock Stadium is in Miami Gardens and FIU's stadium is in Miami proper, 16.62 miles apart. Florida Atlantic in Boca Raton is the third, 30.11 miles from Miami's stadium and 46.37 from FIU's. Three cities along one coastal strip.
The Research Triangle. Duke in Durham, North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and NC State in Raleigh are three cities in one metro conversation, and the stadium triangle is the tightest of any three-team group here: Duke to North Carolina is 8.51 miles, Duke to NC State is 18.31, and North Carolina to NC State is 19.80. No leg reaches 20 miles.
The two-team metros and the borderline cases
Los Angeles has two, with an asterisk the size of Pasadena. USC's Coliseum is in Los Angeles and UCLA's Rose Bowl is in Pasadena, 12.24 miles apart, and they are conference mates in the Big Ten now, which makes LA the only metro here whose two teams share a league. Nashville has Vanderbilt inside the city and Middle Tennessee in Murfreesboro, 31.91 miles apart. The Washington area has Maryland in College Park and Navy in Annapolis, 23.65 miles apart, though Annapolis belongs to Baltimore's metro on paper, which makes it a regional pair rather than a clean metro one. Cincinnati's orbit reaches Miami (OH) in Oxford at 29.22 miles, close enough to count as neighbors and far enough that both schools would argue about it. And the most generous reading of Chicago gets Northwestern in Evanston a partner in NIU, but NIU's stadium in DeKalb is 56.47 miles from Northwestern's, which is less a metro pairing than a day trip.
The near misses
Some big football cities are one-team towns at the FBS level, and the data is blunt about it. Boston has Boston College in Chestnut Hill and then a gap: UMass is 69.99 miles away and UConn is 84.46. New York City has no FBS stadium in the file at all; the metro's two entries, Rutgers in Piscataway and Army at West Point, are 65.80 miles apart, with the city between them in spirit if not in a straight line. Phoenix has Arizona State in Tempe, and Arizona is 100.52 miles south in Tucson, which everyone in Arizona will tell you is a different place entirely.
Count it up and the sport's geography is top-heavy in a specific way. The 136 FBS stadiums in the database sit in 134 different cities, and the only two exact repeats are the Atlanta and Houston pairs above. Two cities have a true pair inside the lines, five metro areas have three FBS teams each, and the clusters sit in Atlanta, Texas, California, Florida, and North Carolina. If you want to see what that clustering does to a map, Gridiron Empire starts every FBS team on its home county and lets the borders move. The metros above are where the fighting starts first, because the neighbors are already there.